why shop independent?

There are two reasons to own an independent bookstore in the “Amazon Era:”
           1. You are a masochist of the first order—a serious pain whore. Or,
           2. You are having an absolute, all-encompassing love affair with books; they run in your blood, you cannot and wouldn’t dream of trying to escape them.
That’s it, there is absolutely no other reason to be a part of the independent book trade these days; it is a sinking ship, and anyone with half a mind about them would run screaming. 

But the thing is many of us don’t run screaming: not the owners who are often times taking out a second mortgage on their house to pay back huge loans that they took out a few years earlier so that their store could stay open, nor the buyers who work long, ridiculous hours, often times doing focused, repetitive, and solitary activities, nor the floor staff who are usually horrifically underpaid and overworked—generally without benefits or, at best, with seriously shitty ones.  Hello! Important information alert!  People who work at independent bookstores really, really, deeply, viscerally, wholly care about books—they wouldn’t be there if they didn’t.  And you want that, really, you do.  Because when your ass walks into a bookstore you want there to be someone, no, lots of someones, in that store who know books—and love books.  And are excited about the fact that you, customer whoever you are, are here, in front of them, to buy a (doo-doo-doo-doot-do-do) book!

I’m a used book buyer.  That means my job is to rut through hundreds of books—hopefully pristine, usually moldy—that people bring in, every day, and buy books for the store to sell used.  Nowhere in my job description is there anything about spending half an hour with a customer, in the stacks, giving fiction recommendations; that’s the “floor staff’s” job.  But I do that all the time, multiple times a day, BECAUSE I LOVE IT!  Really love.  I mean, hello, the fuck do you think I’m doing with this web site?  I want you people to read.  And I want you to read interesting, new, obscure books.  Books that are completely mainstream and completely fabulous, books that are utterly outside your comfort zone, that once read will totally redefine the boundaries of that zone.  That’s independent bookstores, right there: a love of books, and a desire to spread that love like the bird flu gone wild.

Amazon cannot do that for you.  They can sell you a book, but they can’t recommend one, not in any real way.  They cannot listen to what you loved, hated, have read twice, three times, seven times and then get you connected with a great book, a phenomenal author.  And Borders/Barnes & Noble don’t—not in that burn-down-the-house sort of way.  The people who work in those stores are usually sweet, and lovely, and often smart and funny, and totally boxed in by corporate policies.  And, most importantly, they are selling you a product.  That’s what they’re trained to do.

How we doing, team?  People still hanging on?  I’ll take that as a yes and keep plowing ahead.  Here’s the nitty-gritty of it: Borders/Barnes & Noble may have more books on their shelves because they have the money to let a book sit in the stacks for a year and a half, without it ever selling; whereas, oftentimes, an independent store will have to return that same book to the publisher for credit after six months or so, if it hasn’t sold.  The bottom line is, we cannot afford not to.  BUT!  I can talk to you, in potentially-utterly-overwhelming-detail, about a vast majority of those books because I’ve read them, and they can’t.  So, like with Amazon, you may be able to walk in and pick up a copy of Love and Garbage by Klima, but you’d have to know to do so in the first place.  Whereas, you walk into an independent, and we may have to order you something, and you may have to wait two or three days to get it, but it will have expanded your book world in a way you couldn’t have done alone.

Also, we’re stocking our shelves with books we believe in—love, can’t live without.  With new, fantastic authors that chains simply won’t pick up, can’t be bothered with.  With books that are a little too cutting edge for them, a little too outside the norm.  In addition to classics, older and contemporary, we want books where authors are pushing the envelope of the genre—reaching out towards the limits of language to see what can be done.  And if stores are unwilling to take those risks we are economically censoring what can be written—because if stores won’t pick them up, publishers won’t publish them, and then none of us will have access to them.  That is very, very bad for all of us.

Independent bookstores are and always have been at the forefront of the fight against censorship and other threats to freedom of expression; many of those books are in print and being distributed because independent bookstores held fast in the face of social, and at times, federal pressure, to not carry or distribute them.  You wouldn’t have had access to, your kids wouldn’t have read To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, The Quiet American, The Catcher in the Rye if it hadn’t been for independent bookstores.  Particularly in this era of fewer and fewer freedoms of expression, and individual rights, you might want to bear that in mind.

Lastly (and I swear, this is lastly), most of the time, independent bookstores are also your local bookstore.  They are owned and run by people in your town. As a result, they reflect the character of the communities they’re enmeshed in. They support local causes, and participate in and fund community activities. They support and patronize other local businesses, keeping money within the community, rather than allowing it to bleed off to a corporate office hundreds of miles away.

So when you shop, think about these things; they’re important, and wittingly or unwittingly, the choices being made around them are forever changing the face of literature as a whole.  At the end of the day, your money is where your mouth is.  Don’t go getting book recommendations from me, on this website, and then run off to some big huge chain and give them your money—I will know if you do that, and it will seriously rile me.  This website is free; if you want to support it, take your money to your local bookstore and buy the books you hear about here from them.  And if they have to order something for you, wait it out; it’s worth it.  If you don’t have an independent bookstore in your area, or something is out of print and they can’t get it for you, check out the links page on this site; I’ll give you more lit-friendly options for how to shop then you could ever dream of needing.

Jesus, lord, I’ll shut up now.  You’ve all been very indulgent.

Everyone gets five gold stars for this.  Diatribe over.  Class dismissed.